After an hour, I start to wonder.
What if this is the one wound our healer can’t heal?
Chapter
Nineteen
Zonna doesn’t speak for hours. For almost a day.
In near silence, he washes the blood off his parents’ skin, wraps them in clean cloth, and carries them out of the camp. All our attempts to help him are refused by a single sharp motion of his head, but I encase him in a wide, domed ward whether he wants it or not—the persistent rain has become a storm again, a vicious squall that sends lightning through the sky and beats against the trees. Even with the forest as a windbreak, the gusts blowing through here would be strong enough to knock him off his feet, especially when he’s unbalanced by the burdens he’s carrying. If he notices my shield, he doesn’t give a single sign.
Only once does he knowingly accept our help; when it’s time to light the fire. When Rai, Nairo, and Etaro silently approach the site he’s chosen for the burn, he relents, nodding instead of sending them away.
The blaze Rai and Nairo start is searing. It rushes out of their hands in thick ropes of orange-white flame, and it consumes the bodies, burning through flesh and bone so fast there’s no smell, not even a single hint of singed hair and sulphur. Etaro works behind them, collecting what’s left when the fire is through, pulling all the ash away from the pyre and into a pack we emptied for them. It’s the same one that held Tyrroh not long ago.
Soon, sooner than I think any of us were ready for, there is nothing left to burn.
The impossible has happened. Two of the Miriseh are dead.
When Etaro finishes gathering the ashes, ey silently hands the bag to Zonna with a murmur of condolence. I don’t even think he hears it.
We move quickly, the same pace we’ve been pushing ourselves to meet since Osshi left. Traveling inside the wagon, though, leaves too much time to think, for Zonna especially. He sits in the far back corner of the top bed, forehead resting on his knees. Although he responds when we ask him a direct question, he doesn’t otherwise speak or move. He’s not crying, he won’t eat when we offer him food, and when one of the ukaiahana’lona stumbles in the mud and injures their leg, it takes far too long for him to even look up when we call his name and ask for help.
And that is worrying me almost as much as the way this storm feels in the sky.
This is the feeling I got in the desert sometimes, the one that made me look closer at the shadows cast by the mountains and pay extra attention to the land behind us. It’s the same kind of sharp awareness that caught my attention when the first early storm dropped suddenly on Shiara, and I’ve learned to pay attention to it. This paranoid alertness has saved my life before.
Now, there’s nothing to see. No enemy to spot. No way to change the course we’re on. No way to help Zonna who looks like he’s drowning inside his own head. The helplessness of it all only serves to make my skin itch. It makes me feel as though the sun—if I could see it in the sky—would be moving at twice the speed it should be, running faster through the sky and shoving us closer to the moment when we’re going to have to take our next step and hope it’s not too late for it to do any good.
Even with the wards over the open window and door to give us a view of the world we’re passing by, I feel trapped by the storm. I want to run. I want something real to fight instead of this pervasive, nagging fear.
Tessen joins me at the window where I’d been watching the storm lash and rage against the world. Leaning against the wall, he watches me more than the landscape for a moment before he quietly says, “Tell me again what you saw.”
“When?”
“Inside the katsujo.” He reaches out, taking my hand and running his thumb along my knuckles. I glance at the others. They’re close enough to listen, but most of them are either sleeping or having their own quiet conversations.
I do as he asks, closing my eyes but holding on to his hand. Even remembering the touch of the conscious energy at the end is too much, weaker but still blisteringly present. The power in it, and the strangeness of how it was painful and soothing in turns… I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget a single moment.
Sighing, I open my eyes. Movement over Tessen’s shoulder catches my attention—Zonna’s curled up in a corner of the bed. Is his head tilted in our direction or is that wishful thinking? By all rights, he should be in charge now that Tyrroh and his parents are gone, but somehow it’s fallen to me. And now that I have the position I always thought I wanted, I don’t know what to do.
“Tessen…” I lean closer and drop my voice as low as I can. “I need to make the decisions, and I need to be right, and I’m not ready to hold the fate of so many people in my hands. How am I supposed to do that knowing the Kaisubeh or something like them are watching? What if they’re expecting another miracle like the one I pulled off in Kaisuama?”
“Don’t think about it like that.” He brushes his fingers along my hairline and down the side of my jaw, but his eyes don’t leave mine. “Think about it like— Well, from what you and the others described, it seems like they almost want to help.”
“Help.” I rub my eyes with my free hand; it feels like I’m only pushing the thoughts deeper into my brain. “If they wanted to help, they should’ve left Imaku a lot closer to Ryogo.”
Tessen shakes his head. “They’re not people, though, not the way you’re thinking. Remember the older stories Lo’a told? From those and what you said, it sounds more like the desosa somehow gained consciousness.” Then he straightens, his head snapping to stare out the window. The wagon shudders and stops, and his grip on my hand tightens. “Drop the ward, Khya. Lo’a is coming to talk to us.”
I release the ward on the door, instead creating one to protect us from the cold storm. Our departure makes the others follow, all of them trailing us out. Except Zonna. His blank gaze does track us, and I almost go back in and ask him to come with us. The words stick in my throat. He looks away. I give up for the moment and trudge out the door.
Soanashalo’a is talking to the others several feet away, her skirt tied up to keep it out of the mud. As soon as I’m within range, she says, “I got a message from another family. They know the south, and they travel between Rido’iti, Po’umi, and the other southern cities often.”
“Did something happen?” Tessen asks.
“Not yet, but as they were evacuating like we warned them to, they saw strange lights and night-black clouds on the horizon. The last few moons have been bad, but the way they talked about these clouds—” She shakes her head. “It sounded like a storm that would end the world.”
“Maybe it’s just a new storm,” Etaro suggests.
“And maybe Varan will let us feed him to a teegra,” Sanii mutters.
Etaro glares. “You don’t know it’s not!”
“And you can’t assume it is!” Sanii shoots back.
Tessen cringes at the raised voices, and I cut them off. “Stop it. What else did you hear, Lo’a?”
“There have been reports of deep sea fishing vessels returning with stories of odd currents, strange clouds, and storms that rise up out of nowhere.” Soanashalo’a’s gaze scans the group, settling on something behind us. “Some of the ships have gone missing.”
“Stolen or swallowed?” I can imagine ships being easily eaten by the angry ocean, broken up into pieces and devoured. It’s what would’ve happened to Kazu’s ship if I hadn’t been there. And I doubt any of the Ryogan ships had a ward mage onboard.
It’s bad news if the sea took them, because we’ll have to cross that water eventually. Varan would probably laugh till he choked if we drowned before ever getting a chance to challenge him. If I can even drown now.
It’s worse news if those ships were stolen. Varan with ships? The magic alone is bad enough. I don’t want him getting his hands on anything that will make this invasion easier.
And if the storm isn’t a sign of Varan’s army, it could still mean trouble. I can’t believe any crew will b
e willing to sail us into a storm that looks like the end of the world. There’s even less of a chance of us being able to sail a stolen ship ourselves in something that dangerous.
“All we know is they were caught in the storms. Some believe they sank, and others insist the missing ships have been blown far off course, beyond the range of any garakyu,” Soanashalo’a says.
Tessen leans in. “Is that unusual?”
“Not unheard of, but the fishing ships try to keep in contact during a storm,” Soanashalo’a explains. “If only so the others can bring word back to families if a ship is lost.”
“He’s coming,” I say, feeling the truth like a chill in my bones. “They’re almost here.”
“We don’t know that,” Zonna argues. I jump at the sound of his voice—hoarse and flat as it is—but all of us turn to listen. “Varan’s never been good at seeing the negative consequences of his choices. He found a way across the ocean and so he’s going to use it, but he didn’t think about what this level of disruption would do to the weather patterns.”
“Or, if he did, he thought it’d take more time before the damage became noticeable,” Tessen adds. “And despite the number of ward mages Varan has following him, there’s a good chance the storms and the journey will have exhausted them all.”
I cut through the useless debate. “What it means is we need to make a decision. If they’re on their way here, do we work on building our weapons now and stay to meet them, or do we find a ship and try to sail around the worst of this to reach Shiara?”
“What’s the point of going home if the army is on their way here?” Rai asks.
“If we can make it to Shiara, we might be able to find more than thirty other immortals,” Zonna says. “We’ll have more than three times as many on our side if we free everyone Varan trapped on Imaku.”
“Sure. We can do that while they’re here destroying Ryogo.” Miari shakes her head. “How can we leave them here defenseless?”
“Worse than defenseless,” Etaro says softly, looking back toward our wagon where Ahta is standing, watching us. “All they can do is flee, and they’re not even ready for that.”
“And with eleven fighters and a trunk full of overpowered rocks, we’re not ready to face an army,” Rai insists.
Tessen seems distracted, eyes straying toward the road ahead. I step closer, letting the debate continue behind me. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” he says slowly. “There’s something strange ahead, though.”
I follow his gaze, but I don’t see anything except trees and a solid sheet of rain. “Dangerous or different?”
“Familiarly dangerous.” He looks at me, confusion creasing his face. “It feels like the Imaku rock we stole from Mushokeiji. Before you amplified it.”
“What the bellows would any of that rock be doing here?” I ask. “I thought they made sure every speck of that was hidden away.”
“It’s a distinctive feeling, Khya.” Tessen looks back toward the road. “There’s nothing else it could be.”
Glancing at the others, I realize they’ve moved closer to listen. I make a series of quick gestures and they jog back to the wagon to retrieve their weapons. Less than a minute later, we’re moving forward, weapons drawn and magic ready.
There’s a huge section of the road that looks different in the rain. When the thick drops strike most patches of the path, they sink and disappear. In other areas, it splashes, spraying smaller droplets into the air. Like sections of the road are dirt and some are stone.
The road is covered with black rock, from pieces the size of the slab Natani’s holding to a much finer gravel Tessen is examining.
It doesn’t make sense. “Where did this come from? If this from the Mushokeiji vault, I can’t believe they’d use it on this.”
“Exactly,” Sanii says. “This seems like a massive waste of a very limited resource.”
Etaro looks between the black stone and Sanii, eir narrow nose wrinkled. “Even if Osshi told them we were here, and they assumed we were the bobasu, did they seriously spread pieces of rock across the path and think that would be enough to take out all of us? Especially since we have to assume they know we’re not traveling on foot.”
“They had spells to make the stone capable of cracking Khya’s wards,” Zonna says. “We have to assume these can do more damage than the unaltered stone from Imaku. I’m guessing that walking or rolling over this isn’t a good idea.”
“Probably not. And there’s something else,” Tessen murmurs before Zonna can answer. Slowly, he stands and peers into the trees on either side of the road, searching. “Something…”
Then his head tips farther and farther back until he’s looking straight up into the trees. “Oh, no. Khya, there’s a garakyu up there. I didn’t feel it at first because of the stone, but look.”
When he points, Soanashalo’a mutters something in her language, peering up into the trees. I look, too. I can’t see it, but I trust Tessen’s word that it’s there.
I back up, signaling the others to as well. “Have there been any others on this path?”
“Not that I’ve felt,” he says, confidence in his voice. “I’ve been watching the trees since we first spotted them.”
“Sanii, how far can those see?” Ey’s the one who knows the most about that magic.
“The smaller ones are usually only used to send messages between individual people,” ey says. “They see whatever is directly in front of them, but those are bigger. I’d guess they were set up to be able to see the entire patch of stone they laid.”
“Which means they’ll know as soon as we cross it.” Rai adjusts her grip on her weapon and sparks fly from her other hand, extinguishing when they meet the wet ground.
“Ambush.” There’s no other reason to waste this much time, energy, and stone. “They’ve got to have someone waiting nearby.”
Everyone stills and quiets, giving Tessen the silence he needs to listen. We wait. And wait. His head tilts, multiple expressions flashing across his face.
“I can’t be sure,” he finally says, “but I think they’re on the rise in the distance that direction. The rain and the wind make it almost impossible to hear anything else. Lo’a, is there another way out of here?”
“One possibility. If they know we are passing this direction, though, they will almost certainly have closed the paths behind us as well.” She’s tense, her shoulders pulled back and her hands clenched. “What I want to know is how. How did they anticipate our path when even we did not know where we would travel each day?”
“This is your land,” Wehli challenges. “You tell us.”
She pulls back a little, her shoulders curving. “I—I would say Osshi in other circumstances, but he could not have known we would be here.”
“No, but…” I look back to the wagon, remembering the moment Osshi said goodbye. He took a bag with him, but it was his smaller pack. Some of his things are still stowed. “Tessen, you’ve been paying attention to garakyus outside the caravan. Did you ever search inside?”
“Why would—oh.” He looks like a shock just ran through him. Then he curses. “It was there when I started watching for the garakyus. Bellows, Khya, I trained myself to ignore it. I knew it was there, so it didn’t matter, and even after he left I never thought to wonder why it wasn’t missing.”
“And it’s active?” I ask, my stomach sinking.
Tessen nods, expression harsh. “It’s active.”
Blood and rot. I could understand Osshi abandoning us to warn his people. There was honor in that choice, even if I thought it was wrong. This? If I ever see him again, there’s a chance I might gut him for this.
“Lo’a, we need a detailed map of this area and I need to talk to whoever knows it best.” I make the request as politely as possible, refusing to take my anger at Osshi out on her.
She nods and runs off, moving as quickly as the muddy ground allows. I head toward our wagon and then stop. “The garakyu. What do
we do about that?”
Rai looks at me like the answer should be obvious. “Chuck it into the forest and be done with it.”
“But then the Ryogans will know we’ve figured out how they found us,” Sanii counters.
“They’ll know we know as soon as we blow through whatever tyatsu are out there waiting for us,” she snipes.
“Because that’s worked for us so well before.” Etaro gestures at me. “Khya almost died. Tyrroh did die.”
The reminder aches. I can block the arrows now, I want to shout, to force them to remember I can protect them where I failed Tyrroh. But it takes three layers of wards, and it’s painfully exhausting work. I can keep it up for a while, but even with the extra stamina and endurance the susuji gave me, I can’t last forever.
And Etaro is talking again before I can say a word. “Ryogan soldiers may not be able to stand up against the Itagamin army, but we’re not them, Rai. We’re eleven runaways lost in a strange land. We’re outnumbered, and they have a better position and better weapons. If they know we’re preparing for them, they’ll attack early and be done with it. How many more friends are you willing to lose today?”
Pain flashes across Rai’s face.
“So we use it against them instead.” Sanii stands with eir hands on eir hips, looking at our wagon with a speculative expression that so strongly reminds me of Yorri it hurts. This is the look he would get when he was building one of his puzzles. “If you want your enemy to be a certain place, make sure they know you’ll be there. If you want your enemy to stop looking for one secret, let them find another.”
“Give them false information.” I begin to understand, and I smile. “Yes. We’ll go back to the wagon and get what we need to plan the next step, and while we’re inside, we’re going to be talking about the news Lo’a just got—a ship on the southwestern coast is willing to take us to Shiara. It’ll explain why we stopped.”
“You realize we might have to head into that trap if we want to get the hanaeuu we’la maninaio out of here safely,” Tessen murmurs after the others run to the wagon. “They can defend themselves, but they’re not fighters. If the whole caravan turns and runs, this will happen again. They’ll keep chasing them.”
Sea of Strangers Page 31
